@ The Workshop 
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor 
(btwn Broadway & 5th Avenue)

$5 suggested donation; open to the public

Can a novel double as a surreal gallery space? Can a poem be ragged and angry and transcendent without skipping a beat? Come hear these three unique voices who in sharp and subtle turns offer great revelations.

Paolo Javier is the author of Megton Gasgan Krakooom (Cy Gist Press, forthcoming), LMFAO (OMG!), Goldfish Kisses (Sona Books), 60 lv bo(e)mbs (O Books), and the time at the end of this writing (Ahadada Books), which received a Small Press Traffic Book of the Year Award. He is printed matter editor for Boog City, and edits/publishes 2nd Avenue Poetry, a small press devoted to innovative writing. His current project is obb, a multimedia poetry comic with Brooklyn artist Ernest Concepcion. A former Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Writer-in-Residence, he recently served as Visiting Associate Professor in Poetry at the University of Miami. He lives with his wife in Queens. Commenting on 60 lv bo(e)mbs, Rodrigo Toscano has said, "Javier deftly develops what critical theorists have only been able to talk about: the birth of a non-idealist anticipatory-resilient para-national subject. His poetry engenders a polysemic motility that gives inner-life to this new state of independence. What does that mean? It means your kolonial momma's got your poppa's digits - by the products."

Hoa Nguyen was born near Saigon, grew up in the DC area, and studied poetics at New College in San Francisco. She currently lives in Austin Texas where she teaches creative writing. Her most recent books include Kiss A Bomb Tattoo (Effing Press, 2009) and Hecate Lochia (Hot Whiskey, 2009). Cathy Wagner has said, "Space scores Hoa's poems and inserts them into time. Her spaces resemble connecting canyons, arroyos, that threaten to rush full in a storm -- they are capacious enough to handle the emotion (mine) that rises to meet the poem."

Todd Shimoda, is the author of Oh! A Mystery of "Mono no Aware" (Chin Music Press), The Fourth Treasure (Nan Talese/Doubleday), and 365 Views of Mt. Fuji (Stone Bridge Press). Born and raised in Colorado, he has lived in California, Nevada, Texas, and Japan. His doctorate is from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a professor at Colorado State University and a visiting researcher at UC-Berkeley. He blogs at shimodaworks.com, contributes to the Asian Review of Books, and is a partner in the California firm SF Design Associates. Selecting Oh! as an NPR 2009 Summer Recommended Read, NPR reviewer Lucia Silva said, "In seamless counterpoint to the philosophical current, Shimoda shapes a delicate mystery that grows darker as the novel progresses. The book itself is a fine work of art, with a gorgeous, embossed cover, rice-paper-thin pages...a triumphant kick in the pants for anyone who doubts the future of paper-and-ink books."